Planning for records retention in Office 365

Office 365 is sometimes referred to as an 'ecosystem'. In theory this means that records could be stored anywhere across that ecosystem. Unlike the 'old' on-premise world of standalone servers for each Microsoft application (Exchange, SharePoint, Skype) - and where specific retention policies could apply (including the Exchange Messaging Records Management MRM policy), the various …

Why is ‘going digital’ a problem for records management?

Few organisations create original records on paper any more. Almost all the paper records that are created these days are the printed versions of born-digital records. In a somewhat ironic twist, many organisations seek to digitise (or 'scan') the printed versions of born-digital records. And yet, there apparently continues to be an ongoing problem in …

What happens when you create a Team in MS Teams

On 27 March 2020 I asked, via Twitter, whether organisations that rolled out MS Teams will wonder in the future who created all the random (and randomly-named) SharePoint sites. The reason for this question was because many organisations, scrambling to establish ways for staff to work from home, decided to make use of MS Teams …

Managing emails as records in Office 365

Records managers have been struggling with managing emails as records ever since they first appeared in the workplace. For a long time the accepted practice, as with other digital records, was to print them out and put them on the appropriate file. With the introduction of electronic document and records management (EDRM) systems, end users …

More than metadata – information management professionals and data modelling

Most information management professionals (in the context of this post - records managers, information managers, librarians) are familiar with the use and application of metadata. The metadata in their domain of work may: Form part of the built-in properties of digital records, and remain with it wherever it is stored, as part of its metadata …